


the abandoned prophet

by Princex_N



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Delusions, Depersonalization, Derealization, Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mental Health Issues, Religious Content, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24843703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Jay isn't sure if he counts as a real person anymore.To be frank, he's not sure if he ever really did.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14
Collections: Religiously Themed Delirium





	the abandoned prophet

Jay isn't sure if he counts as a real person anymore. 

To be frank, he's not sure if he ever really did. 

See, he'd tried to tell Tim, but he doesn't think he'd done a very good job of explaining himself (the only way Jay has been good at explaining anything these past few years has been white sans serif font on a black background; 120 characters or less). He's not sure what had gone wrong with the words, if it was a misunderstanding or a miscommunication. He's not sure how well he can explain any of this in the first place, because, see, Jay can't always remember exactly what he'd _been_ doing with his time before he had started going through tapes at an obsessive rate. 

He's learned enough by now to know that isn't particularly good. To know that the oppressive lack of memories is likely some _thing_ sticking its fingers into the soft electric tissue of his brain and scrambling things around as if he was just another camera, eyes for lenses and brain full of mechanical fragments, but part of him looks back on what he _does_ recall and wonders if maybe the rest just wasn't worth remembering in the first place. 

Jay was a man in his mid-twenties who was living alone in a shitty one-bedroom apartment, working some going-nowhere job for the sole reason of being able to pay his too expensive rent (because, really, what _did_ he expect to do with a major in film?). His mom had called every couple of weeks to chat about nothing and check in (Jay can't remember what they talked about, can't remember her number, her _face),_ but no one else ever called. He didn't have friends, didn't know his neighbors, wasn't dating, didn't have hobbies, didn't have _anything_. 

And then he'd gotten bored enough to dig up some old tapes from college, and then there had been a _purpose_. 

Jay can't remember his mother's face anymore, but he remembers going to church with her. Remembers the conversations they used to have when he was growing up. God spoke to Jay's mother in impulses and nagging thoughts, any big decision pushed ahead with the phrase 'God put it on my heart', and Jay never got it growing up and stopped bothering to try once he hit high school, but sometimes now he thinks he _understands_. God put things on his mother's heart, but They speak to Jay through camera film and the close call of near-death experiences and it's something next to exhilarating every time the communication ends. 

He would never call this journey blessed or protected, not by God and not by any other being, but he might just call it Ordained (just not when anyone else could hear, because Jay might be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them - he knows what people think when you say things like that out loud, and he can't afford to have everything he's been through dismissed as crazy bullshit, regardless of whether or not Tim seems like he _understands_ sometimes too). Assigned and commanded and decreed. 

But the thing about being given a purpose is that Jay isn't sure if he's good for anything else anymore. 

He had tried to call it quits before, when his apartment had burned (and he hadn't burned with it because they had threatened him, but Jay knows threats well enough by now to know that it had been a _warning_ instead), and there was nothing in it that mattered, but that hadn't been the point. Walking away had seemed like the best option, the safest choice, but the only thing Jay remembers of it is the hollow ache of a broken toy left with no one to wind it back up. 

There had been nothing. Nothing to the point where Jay has wondered if the memories are nothing more than dreams, but they aren't. Life had taken on the same cloudy static _feeling_ of a dream, distant and wrapped in wool and carelessness, but it had been nothing if not agonizingly real. Painful and suffocating and pointless and aching. 

Jay doesn't want to think about what he's supposed to do when his journey reaches an end. What could he possibly hope to accomplish? What does he have to go back to? 

The answer is nothing, plain and simple. He's known that, might have known that from the beginning, might have even been the reason he had been chosen in the first place, but now Jay wonders if he's too far gone to become anything new either. 

He's been hollow and dedicated for years. The camera and the hunt and the search for answers the only real thing Jay has been able to touch in nearly half a decade and nothing else can come close anymore. Everything else is wrapped in that hazy lack of importance, a subtle signal that it doesn't matter and can't count for anything important. 

Tim talks about going back, about his job and his house and his life, and Jay listens with a detached sort of horror, because it doesn't make _sense_ to him anymore. He remembers college and knowing where he was going and being excited to get there, but something had faded out of his brain and Jay doesn't know how to get it back. Once this is over, there's not going to be _anything_ left for him, and he doesn't know what to do with that. There's not a going back to normal, Jay doesn't thik he has hte pieces to do that anymore. He's not sure if he ever really did. 

(Did God pull the components out of him, yanking out mechanisms and operating systems to make room for what They needed him to be able to do? Was Jay ever made the right way to begin with? Something half-formed and incomplete inside of him, set loose onto the world with the knowledge that there was no reason for him to have the necessary pieces because they weren't needed for what he had been made for. But now that purpose is running out, the journey is coming to a close, and Jay doesn't know what it means that he doesn't have those connections now. What is there left for him to do?)

It isn't quite the same as before, there's a difference, maybe, subtle but all-encompassing, but Jay can't remember if it was something small that had gotten worse or something huge that had been stolen out of him. Jay had never been particularly social, had never been good with other people, but now it feels almost robotic. An answering machine resting in the meat of his throat, the words leaving his mouth with some weak pre-recorded quality to them, empty and hollow. He knows what he's saying but is never quite sure if he understands why he's saying it, can never quite recall what the words were after the fact, even without the appearance of a faceless creature to steal the memories from inside his skull. 

Sometimes he watches those moments on the tape. Listens to himself chat with the woman giving him directions on the street corner or exchanging pleasantries with the teenager behind the counter of the drug store and tries to figure out what's wrong with him. The voice is his, and he remembers all the steps leading up to speaking, but the weak attempts at social interaction are vague and discordant in his mind. 

(Jay wonders if they feel as strange as he does, after the fact. If they try to remember the details of his face but can't, if they hear the tinny electric edge to the sound of his voice too. If they can tell that there's something wrong with him as easily as he can. People don't go out of their way to avoid him, but he wonders sometimes, if they can see him coming out of the corners of their eyes and if they turn tail to avoid him without a second thought, something under his skin that unnerves them and sends them running. A changeling in human skin, something just a little too Uncanny Valley to fit anymore, broken and empty and _rotten_.) 

(Tim is the only one who's different. Conversations that Jay remembers participating in, quiet laughter exchanged that Jay understands the source of, small looks and nudges shared that finally make _sense_. It might be enough, maybe, one person enough to help Jay figure out how to maneuver through real life again, to help him understand what he's missing and how to pretend to fit in once more. Sometimes Jay almost believes it. Most of the time he knows better.) 

Jay hasn't read a bible in years, but sometimes he tries to remember if any of God's chosen had ever made it back home when their duties were done. If they returned and could just pick up where they left off, go back to work, greet their families and their friends, and just... move on. 

He doesn't think any of them did. He doesn't think he'll be able to either. 

Jay is pretty sure he'd passed the point of no return a long time ago. Stumbled over the dividing line without a single glance back because he hadn't even noticed the change. Never noticing the walls closing in behind him because he was just too focused on the static buzz of the camera in his hand. 

He doesn't know what that says for the trajectory of this journey, for how this story is going to end, for where Jay is going to wind up. It doesn't feel like it'll be anything remarkable, anything good, anything satisfying or freeing. 

Jay isn't returning home from this journey a hero. He doubts he'll be returning at all, really, even _if_ he had something to return to in the first place. 

He wonders what it says about him that he can't quite find it in himself to care. 

(As long as he gets the answers he's been looking for, as long as he reaches _some_ kind of conclusions, as long as he gets a chance to _understand_ , none of the rest matters.)

(Isn't that the whole point of him now anyway?) 

**Author's Note:**

> the vibes are way off lads
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
